Willy
brings up his memories of Dave Singleman while he is in Howard's office trying to talk his boss
into letting him work in the New York area rather than having to cover all of New England. What
impressed Willy was that Singleman was eighty-four years old and still successful as a traveling
salesman. Willy is using him to suggest that he himself is relatively young at the age of
sixty-three, but he is making a bad impression on Howard. If Willy is still full of energy, then
why does he want to be taken off the road? Willy sounds like an old-timer by talking about a man
who traveled by railroad in the old days when automobiles were a novelty.
Singleman set a bad example for Willy. Specifically, Willy got the idea that he might
never have to retire, so he didn't have to worry about the future. He was the kind of man who
would be unhappy in retirement. He didn't know anything but selling. He had thought about doing
a little gardening but never got around to it until it was too late. A lot of men do not want to
retire or even to think about retiring. As Shelly Levine, a salesman, says in David Mamet's play
Glengarry Glen Ross, "A man IS his job." So, partly because of
Singleman, Willy never planned ahead but just lived from day to day and from roadtrip to
roadtrip. There wasn't too much he could have done, but he did meet lots of people on his
travels and he might have found ways of making more money by changing to a different company, or
even starting his own little business.
The name Singleman suggests several
different things. It suggests that he was a single man, a bachelor. He didn't have Willy's
responsibilities or expenses. And he never thought about retiring because life on the road was
more interesting than sitting alone in some furnished room waiting to die. The name Singleman
also suggests that he is a single, unique example of a man who can continue working when he is
eighty-four years old. Willy shouldn't have chosen him as a role model. Willy is nearly used up
at the age of only sixty-three. Furthermore, Willy only took Singleman's word for it that he had
lots of friends and that he was earning a good living. Singleman may have just been getting by.
People who live to be eighty-four don't have many friends left. He was dealing with merchants
who were half his age, or less. He may have had some bread-and-butter item to peddle which
merchants could use but not in big quantities, so he didn't have any competition. The
description of Singleman's magnificent funeral was all, literally, in Willy's dreams. Willy
probably had more people at his own funeral than Singleman had. Willy had his wife, two sons,
and Charley.
It is interesting that the words "death of a salesman"
are spoken only once in the play. This is when Willy is talking to Howard about Dave
Singleman.
Do you know? when he died--and by the way he
died the death of a salesman, in his green velvet slippers in the smoker of the New York, New
Haven and Hartford, going into Boston--when he died, hundreds of salesmen and buyers were at his
funeral.
Singleman was homeless. He was undoubtedly
buried in Boston because that was where he died. If he had died in Philadelphia, he would have
been buried in Philadelphia. Willy thinks there is something glamorous and even heroic about
being a traveling salesman, but he himself is an example of the grim
reality.
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